'Boss' Season 2 finale: Will Jeff Hephner's Zajac find God?

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Tonight (Friday, Oct. 19), Season 2 of Starz’ political drama “Boss” comes to a close. While the network has yet to announce a renewal, star Jeff Hephner is starting to think about possibilities for next season.

He plays Ben Zajac, the Illinois State Treasurer, who, as of last week’s episode, seemed a shoe-in to win his gubernatorial bid, but at the cost of finding himself in the pocket of powerful Chicago Mayor Tom Kane (Kelsey Grammer).

At the same time, a sex scandal during the campaign has seemingly torpedoed his marriage to his ambitious wife Maggie (Nicole Forester), mother to their two sons.

So, while Zajac may gain the statehouse but he’s already been thrown out of his own house. He has even contemplated returning to church to try to straighten his life out and repair his relationship with his wife.

Hephner, a Roman Catholic husband and father of three, finds the idea intriguing.

“It’s time for him to grow up,” he tells Zap2it. “It’s time for him to fight his own fights. In the beginning of the year, you get to see that he let his wife fight some of those fights. It would be great to see, as an adult relationship, them finding another balance. I’d hate to see, personally, a family break up.

“We can have a great, mature representation of reconnoitering, in a sense, of making these two very potentially powerful people, and powerful personalities, especially hers — I think that can be put in balance. You can get a sense of how much work that is. So many people, we give up. It would be great to play an example of a couple that can sort it out.”

But Hephner hopes, if it does ever happen, that it’s not just for show.

“I had thought of this, too,” he says, “that to not get his crap together for political gain. Like, Newt Gingrich joining the Catholic Church smacked of that to me, when seven or eight years ago, he introduced himself into the Catholic Church to get married. He came off as trying to manipulate the Catholic vote.

“It would be great to see a search like that, and that’s going to be hard to do on TV, as you and I both know. But a search that’s something that helps him in his growth as a man … and I think the question can be out there, is he doing it for votes, or is he doing that to actually fix himself and fix his family?

“That would be a fantastic angle and a healthy angle. If you’re going to find any kind of cure to some of these personal demons that people like Zajac have, that’s a great place to start. I really do hope we go in that direction.”